The biggest single state contract in North Carolina is behind schedule and over budget. The Medicaid claims system is two years behind and $200 million over the original contract signed in 2008.

Have you heard the one about the guy who came in for a CT scan?

Of course you haven't, and the joke is on you. Because doctors and health officials failed to track the patient, the fellow in question got 328 brain scans in just two years.

That incident -- which took place in this state -- is emblematic of the nation's broken health care system, said Lanier Cansler, N.C. Secretary of Health and Human Services. We've got the science to map a patient's brain but we don't have a system in place to keep patients from getting unnecessary procedures.

"You can recognize that person because they glow in the dark," Cansler quipped.